Six hours earlier, Edrick had set fire to Blackbeard's warehouse and calmly evacuated the burning building. However, he did not immediately leave the dock. Instead, he made his way to the base of the lighthouse at the easternmost end of the dock. Six "rats" were crammed into four overturned wooden barrels.
They were orphans who wandered around Blackbeard's dock. This didn't mean that only six orphans were in the area; it simply meant that only these six were still alive.
The bustling dock had high personnel turnover and served as a transit point for information and goods, offering more opportunities for survival. The orphans typically earned pocket money and basic necessities by doing odd jobs, such as moving cargo, running errands, and scavenging leftover goods.
Edrick occasionally hired these orphans for odd jobs as a form of assistance because the Croft family was also in dire circumstances.
Lira, the elf girl, was using rusty nails to reinforce a newly found wooden leg — a prosthetic limb that had drifted ashore from a sunken ship, its owner unknown — fitting it to her deformed right foot. It fit her deformed right foot like a blackened radish.
Her faded raven-feather headdress hung down over her forehead, covering the indigo tattoo on the corner of her left eye. Before the royal family of Stellaxis converted to the Luminous Pontificate, they worshipped the stars, and every pure-blooded elf child had a star tattooed on the corner of their eye.
Stellaxis Pragis was the capital of the elven kingdom of Zodiac. However, after Zodiac converted to the Luminous Pontificate, more and more humans gathered there, forming a mixed-race society. Today, only about one-third of the population is elven because, compared to humans, elves are much less fertile.
Lira's wooden leg, carved from oak and wrapped in faded royal ribbons salvaged from a shipwreck, was a testament to her resilience. Edrick found them and gave them to her because she was about the same age as his sister, Miryam.
Edrick remembered a Aridian child from half a month ago: "Where's that Aridian kid? What was his name again?"
The children here were highly mobile, and Lira and Lochlan were among the few who had stayed for a relatively long time, so Edrick had managed to remember their names. Some had been sold into slavery, some had gone missing, and some had simply died.
"Nick the Weasel from Broken Barrel came by, saying they needed a Crippled Beggar." Lira's expression darkened, but that was all. She was a strong child who had grown accustomed to such things.
Edrick didn't ask any more questions. That Aridian boy wasn't a Crippled Child, but that didn't matter. The Broken Barrel Gang had their own ways.
It was a small gang in the slums made up of vagrants, unemployed laborers, and street thugs—a more despicable and lower-class organization than the Scamps. They hid in the shadows, surviving by trafficking homeless children and beggars.
The Transmigrator looked at these runaways of various races and felt complicated emotions.
Honestly, this was far from his image of elves, dwarves, and giants, but this was the bloody reality.
"You won't have to worry about the Broken Barrel anymore.
Edrick silently promised himself.
Lochlan's pointed ears were missing a piece. As a half-elf, he always kept his coal-stained leather cap pulled down low. Edrick couldn't help but wonder what the difference was between half-elves and pure-blooded elves. Perhaps the only difference was their lineage.
At that moment, Lochlan was using his frozen hands to count the matches Edrick had just handed him. The damp matchbox left a red stain on his palm. "What will we have to eat this time?"
Edrick crouched on the fishy wooden planks and pulled a black loaf of bread wrapped in oil paper from his work pants. The crust was mixed with sawdust, but the edges were smeared with precious pork fat.
The eyes of the six children lit up. The youngest and largest of the giant girls, Gwendolin, curled up in the biggest barrel. At nine years old, she was nearly 1.8 meters tall, but malnutrition had left her hunched over. She stared at the black bread in the oil paper and couldn't help but lick her lips. "Is that...pork fat?"
"Don't just lick your lips—use it for the story," said Edrick's voice, mingling with the distant foghorn of a cargo ship. "Say you saw Blackbeard's men moving boxes from Warehouse 3 last night. What was leaking out wasn't rum—it was 'black honey.'"
Edrick paused, then continued, "Also, say they stole the treasures from the Cathedral of Luminous Pragis. As for what exactly they took, you can make that up. If you can't think of anything, just say you saw the Luminous Prism glowing on their ship like shattered moonlight."
Wooden Leg suddenly bumped into the wooden barrel, making a dull thud. "But we've never seen the Luminous Prism..."
Edrick threw her half a piece of hard candy wrapped in sugar paper that he had stolen from a bakery on Soot Street; the edges of the paper were still sticky with butter. "What's the brightest thing you've ever seen?" "The light from a lighthouse!"
Gwendolin rushed to answer, her snot popping in the cold wind. Edrick nodded. "Just say that thing is three times brighter than a lighthouse and can talk. It says, 'Blackbeard is going to burn the eyes of God.' Isn't that exaggerated enough? Half true, half false. Spread it around."
"But how do you stop people from tracing it back to you?" Lira suddenly asked, her bright eyes flashing with a cunning not befitting a child—a child not clever enough to survive here long.
Edrick pulled six strands of rope from his toolkit. Each strand was braided into three loops with a single knot. The ends were left hanging in uneven tassels, resembling the tail feathers of a raven in flight. These were their tokens: the Raven Knots. "You guys tell people in different places, like, 'I heard it from the teeth of Drunk Tom,' or, 'I heard the seagulls calling these words on the lighthouse.'"
The dwarf Balin was excited when he saw the Raven Knots. Suddenly, he muttered in a thick accent, "Does that make us the 'Fogport Ravens'?"
The children had given themselves this nickname, mimicking the names of gangs like Blackbeard's crew. Every time Edrick gave them a Raven Knot, it meant they had a mission. The reward was usually very generous, such as black bread, matches, or a tattered blanket.
Edrick didn't answer; he just broke the remaining bread into twelve pieces. "Remember, my name can't be in the story, and there can't be any specific times. If anyone gives you candy..." He stared at Lira and began to distribute the bread. "Just point to the black smoke coming from the chimneys on Soot Street and say, 'Ask the scavengers over there.'"
Soot Street was a mixed crowd of land thugs, thugs, vagrants, and orphans, so any clue pointing to a specific location would be lost in the dirty coal dust.
When the first rays of dawn crept up the lighthouse, the six children didn't look like ravens. They scurried like rats into every corner of the docks. Lochlan pinned the raven badge to his leather cap and headed toward the "Rust Anchor" tavern, where sailors gathered to hear him retell Edrick's story.
In a pile of discarded fishing nets, a one-legged elf girl demonstrated how to kick away patrol dogs with her wooden leg. "Do you know what's inside the Holy Prism?"
She lowered her voice, imitating the tone of a dock ballad singer: "I saw the tears of God locked inside. Blackbeard drank them, and now his eyes burn with blue fire..."
...
A giant girl with snot bubbles hanging from her nose lay in the garbage heap in the coal-ash alley. She used her frozen fingers to draw the crooked emblem of the Blackbeard gang in the coal dust—an anchor shape with an extra eye added on purpose.
When the patrolman kicked her, she suddenly pointed at the smoking chimney. "The scavengers over there said that the water leaking from Blackbeard's chest can turn children's eyes into lanterns!"
Her snot bubbles burst in the coal ash. "They stole a holy relic from the church: a crystal prism that contained the tears of God. Now, the tears are flowing out and turning the coal into poisonous rats!"
The patrolman's frown told the giant girl that this rumor would spread like coal ash in the wind.
...
A skinny girl crouched in the stinking fish pile at the Billingsgate Fish Market. Her fingers absentmindedly played with the raven feathers in her hair. They were stained with rust and fish oil from the dock crane.
When the fishmonger waved his knife to chase her away, she suddenly pointed to the smoking warehouse in the distance. "See those black barrels? They're not filled with rum, but with black honey that bites."
Deliberately, she let her torn apron brush against the fish blood. "I heard Blackbeard's men say they stole a glowing object from the church. It's three times brighter than the Thames's will-o'-the-wisps. Now it's on his ship, crying, and its tears taste like coal dust."
The fishmonger's curses mingled with the screams of seagulls, but a few housewives gathered quietly nearby—their husbands were Blackbeard's porters.
…
The half-elf boy tied a raven's feather to his tattered hat and blended into the crowd of sailors at the "Rusty Anchor" tavern.
He pretended to choke on the alcohol and bumped into a burly man with an iron anchor tattoo. "Sorry!"
The tassel of his raven knot brushed against the man's rum glass. "I saw it at the dock just now." The rats in warehouse No. 3 were jumping into the river. They say that Blackbeard stole the 'Eye of God' from the church, and now it's burning in a box, turning the sea red."
He lowered his voice, imitating the slurred speech of a drunkard: "Do you know what the Eye of God is? It's a talking mirror that says, 'When the tide rises tomorrow, all those with iron anchors will be fed to the fish.'"
The big man slammed his fist on the wooden table, but no one noticed the red cloth strip peeking out from the half-elf boy's sleeve. He had torn it from Blackbeard's old uniform.
Everyone was rushing to finish their work, and Edrick was no exception.
Everyone was rushing to finish their work, and Edrick was no exception. His plan was complex; revenge was only one part of it. At the same time, he hoped to create a slightly better life for himself, his sister, his younger sister, and the other children.
At least they could eat black bread for every meal. They wouldn't have to worry about dying on the streets or being sold by slave traders.
However, it would be very difficult for Edrick to root out larger gangs, such as the Blackbeard Gang and the Soot Street Scamps. Dealing with Nick the Weasel of Broken Barrel, however, would require a meticulous plan. To deal with him, all he needed was Ripper Edrick.
"I don't know if you can hear me, but I have no other choice. Whoever you are, I hope you can answer my humble prayer. I need your help."
Edrick suddenly heard a faint voice, and his consciousness returned to the Sanctum of the Village Deity in front of the television.
"What's going on? Whose voice is that?" Edrick felt that the voice was familiar, but he couldn't quite remember it.
"Hey, you really are a forgetful nobleman. Aren't you the one who heard this voice when you first traveled here?" the Flower Maiden said in a strange tone.
Edrick remembered that when he was killed in Prague, his blood had splattered onto the statue of the Village Deity, and he had heard a voice calling for help.
"This voice..." Before he could finish, the television automatically tuned in, and he saw someone kneeling before the camera on the screen. The figure was completely shrouded in black knight armor; their face was indistinguishable. However, their voice was clearly that of a woman.
Her armor was torn and stained with blood. In the distance, there were sounds of fighting and shouting. She seemed to be a desperate general surrounded by helpless women and children of different races. They were hugging each other and praying desperately to an unknown deity in various languages.
Edrick's divine abilities helped him understand strange languages he had never learned before, including Elvish, Dwarvish, and Orcish.
What made Edrick laugh and cry at the same time was that the scarred female knight was not praying to his deity. Broken and tattered statues and talismans were scattered all over the ground in Edrick's field of vision.
Deities of all races were represented, as were their believers, all praying desperately to any deity that might respond.
"Desperate times call for desperate measures." Edrick shook his head, not knowing what to do. "But what can I do?"
The Flower Maiden looked at her clueless apprentice village deity and shook her head. "You still have a lot to learn. Remember, you have a talent called 'faith bounty.'"
Edrick nodded blankly. "Isn't that the talent for gaining Faith Essence Points?"
The Flower Maiden looked at Edrick as if he were stupid. "Gaining Faith Essence Points is only one aspect of this talent. The other aspect is rewarding your followers with Faith Essence Points. Come on. Let your followers see the power of the deities."
The desperate Black Knight ended her prayer. She had no other choice. The Shadow Legion she led was already in a desperate situation. They had sacrificed so much to find the missing deity. However, the Black Rose Knights outside had already drawn their swords.
The Shadow Legion was a powerful force among the resistance groups, but the Black Rose Judgment Knights were one of the three great knight orders under the Church—far beyond what the current Shadow Legion could withstand.
However, the Black Knight had her own trump card. As long as she could regain some stamina, she could unleash a devastating spell. It wouldn't be enough to turn the tide of battle, but it could allow them to escape.
"Just a little more..." The Black Knight was unwilling to give up. She was unwilling... Huh? It seems like she's almost there.
The Black Knight was stunned to discover that her strength was recovering at an astonishing speed. The Aether she had consumed was rushing into her body, and the source of this pure Aether was an inconspicuous statue of the village deity.
The women and children around her also noticed this incredible scene. They abandoned the deities they had been praying to and turned to the village deity statue instead.
[Faith Essence Points Consumed: 200]
[Faith Essence Points Gained: 20]
[Faith Essence Points Gained: 2]
[Faith Essence Points Gained: 2]
[Faith Essence Points Gained: 2]
[Faith Essence Points Gained: 2]
...
"Helping her recover her stamina cost 200 Faith Essence Points! This is a terrible deal!"